Category Archives: Memories

Around this time in April I feel a bit odd ever since I started having memory recall of my life as Manfred. And for those of you who don’t know who Manfred was – I was a Prussian, aka German, pilot during the First World War. I was essentially shot down on this day of April in 1918. The difficult parts about this death is that the history books do not record it correctly, I did not complete my mission, and I missed out on having a happy life with most most recently wed to bride. History also does not record that either. Although I do know that I was married in Bavaria and know the marriage number. They won’t release a copy of the certificate.

Disturbing to see a photo of oneself dead even though it was long ago in the past.

So the history books show or speculate that I was shot down and died, but the truth of the matter was that the plane got hit as well as my right elbow and I was forced to land. I was injured but I survived only to be shot in the back by three men dressed in what I believe were French uniforms. This is curious because supposedly there was not supposed to be French troops in the area at the time where I crash landed the plane near a row of large bushes. I was waiting for enemy troops to arrive, so I was looking in the direction I was expecting them, which was opposite of where these guys came from. Yes, I was nervous and a bit scared since ground troops had a bad reputation for treating pilots on both sides poorly. As aviators, who understood the dangers of aerial combat – we often tried to get to our “prey” before the ground troops did. These assholes who came out of the bushes basically shot at an unarmed man who was waiting to surrender. I dived down to the ground hence the strange placement of the wounds in my body – the experts never consider this option – and I proceeded to lie on the ground while my attackers came over and kicked at me. I think they kicked me in the face as well as other places. Curiously, the last person I saw while alive was the kindly face of a dark haired man who I believe was Scottish.

Then there is the mission, which I have no proof of what so ever. Kaiser Wilhelm wanted to end the war and he needed someone to take a message to the other side. My memories of the conversation with him are still somewhat repressed probably because they don’t match what we have been taught during this lifetime, but he wanted the war to end. For some reason he felt that he could not trust someone within his own advisory group. I don’t think he knew who it was. It was like someone or a group of people were working against him. He wanted the war to end as a stalemate. He wanted the Americans to help – not to win the war – but make it end. I was given documents and money, which the historians have mentioned in books, but the documents from the Kaiser have not surfaced except a friend came across some special items in one of the universities in England. She did not know what she had come across and then suddenly these documents were hidden away from access.

I think very fondly of the men in this photo. I was proud to fly with them. My former self – Manfred – is seated in the plane.

Part of the arrangements to get me safely behind enemy lines was coordinated with an old military group that had gone underground several hundred years ago and did not have any allegiances to any government or religious group. Their role in the war was to save the lives of the innocent and try to get the war to end. Their members were amongst the nationalities that were involved in the war. Unknown to me several of my pilots were members of this group and they may have been considering me as a possible ally or new member. At least I would have hoped they would have had me on the list to consider for membership. I believe that Roy Brown and the pilot that I pretended to chase after were either members or sympathetic to their mission. They were to act as an escort. Unfortunately the ground troops got involved in our little show and my plane was damaged along with my right elbow.

Lastly, my marriage to Werner Voss’s younger sister Margret was not to be enjoyed this lifetime. It is something that I regret. I finally found someone who was right for me. This is also a point of contention with the historians. I even had one say to me that he did not care if what I wrote to him about was the truth – he was going to publish and write what he wanted to say regardless of what really happened. This hits me to the very core of my being in that I think that professionals should uphold a higher standard. They should do what is right. Historians are supposed to be preservers of the past, of what really truthfully happened, and not what someone wants to say what happened. We learn nothing from those kind of lies.

Yes, I am idealist. And everyday I look in the mirror and wonder why I should remain one.

A friend with past life recall had a dream the other night about the First World War….

He emailed me thinking that it was such an awful dream hoping that it is was just a bad dream and not a memory. He dreamed that a French speaking military force destroyed a French speaking village (that had a different accent) and that the villagers came to us – the German airfield for help. I know that accidents do occur in war time, but he assured me that it was done on purpose with great malice.

Then I started to have the memory flashes.

An overcast day – it’s hard to tell what time it is – I feel like I am standing next to one of the buildings at the airbase and am looking westwards and people are showing up. There is a perplexed feeling in my mind as this is something I have not experienced before. I see a man about late forties with salt and pepper hair – lots of white – with a thick mustache wearing civilian clothes, dress pants, dress shirt, a vest, no jacket and he tells me something and pointing in the direction of where I am looking. I can see in the distance fields and canal systems, some rows of bushes along the small canals – these are for irrigation – and the guy is telling me something and I see a teenage light haired female in a light colored dress that is not long and she is walking this way with something in her arms and she looks miserable and dirty. And there are others… They all look like they are covered in light dust.

They are akin to zombies covered in dust and the emotional feeling from them is despair and extreme shock. As a commander of a military base that is supposed to be their enemy in this conflict – I am perplexed as to what to do. These are civilians. These are just regular people that have been attacked by forces that are supposed to be on their side – whatever that means. There is often a feeling that the war doesn’t make any sense, and this certainly is one of those situations.

I shared this description with my friend and it matches what he recalls. He recalls going immediately to the village to help find survivors. He took a rifle and found a small enemy force there committing atrocities to the villagers. He said that he eventually ended up in hand to hand combat with some of these enemy soldiers. (He had been Karl Emil Schaefer and certainly had a reputation for being a man of action.)

I later asked another friend who was my younger brother, Lothar, during the war and was also a pilot under my command if he recalled any such situation to which he replied that it occurred more than once.

Today, my friend who used to be Emil, did some research and did find references to towns and villages being completely destroyed during WWI. We think it was one of the villages near the Douai or Roucourt base – I don’t recall the names so much as what it looked like and I have not found many pictures of the bases during the time. He found a list of destroyed villages during the war and there were two names that rang a bell with me, but that does not mean they were the village in question. Louvemont-Côte-du-Poivre and Beaumont-en-Verdunois were the two places listed that rang a bell. I had originally thought that it had been a village in Belgium.

It is at moments like this that I really wish reincarnation was more fully accepted and that we could do some serious research work based upon what we are recalling. So many of us with real legitimate memories could offer clues about the past and work with archeologists, anthropologists, and historians to discover hidden and lost events of the past. It’s all in my head – there are times when I wish I could simply show it to people like a film.

One of my goals is to document some of these past life memories for future generations to examine. Just because people have closed minds now does not mean that future generations will be as such. In the past 20 years I have seen people go from the attitude that there is no thing such as ghosts to let’s try and document these ghost experiences and understand what they really are.

As the big Winter holiday season comes roaring up the pathway, I find my mood influenced by not only the people around me, but also by the deep hidden memories that reside within my soul. To have these additional memories can sometimes make situations more complex by bringing a feeling of redundancy or deja vu or give deep intense emotional meaning from another time to a situation that may seem to be very far removed from the current lifetime. Some of these emotions are difficult to deal with while others are a great joy to experience.

It is a joyful experience that I wish to share during this Winter season when historically it was so important for those from the Northern Hemisphere, most especially the region of Europe where one needed to keep their spirits up during a time of darkness from the lack of sunlight and heavy cloud cover from seasonal storms and the ever present potential of starvation from the lack of supplies for the Winter consumption. Of course, I realize that those in the North American Continent as well as Asia had the same concerns but I have no memories of Asia and only one of being on the North American continent that seems to leave me with only short flashes of insight. Most of the lives that I recall have occurred in Europe. And being a European often means walking on a duel path that has a new religion layering its expectations upon a people with an already well established rich culture. In many cases it seems as if the people actually retained both ways: some fully aware of what they were doing and others oblivious to the duel nature of their existence.

So while the people would attend their church weekly, they would also subconsciously recall the wisdom of the old traditions that celebrated life during the Winter months and gave hope for the Spring to come and relief from the depression of the Winter cold. Joyful memories and visitations happened during the Winter Solstice and Yule celebrations, which allowed for happy celebration of events to tide people through the remaining cold days. These celebrations generally included gift exchanges, feasting, sharing of stories, singing, and dancing. And while the new religion influenced some of the topics of celebration, the old traditions remained at the core of why these activities were done.

So how does this all of this play into past life memories? The Seasonal Christmas music will often send me back to another time especially when played by the older instruments. A CD in particular that is Celtic in style and has older melodies composed from well over a 100 years ago seems to bring me back to what appears to be the 1700’s and perhaps the 1800’s as well. (Christmas Celtic – A Holiday Series by Dayton-Hudson Corp. Minnesota. It doesn’t seem to have a band or artist attached to this CD.) I would like to share some of the imagery that comes to mind while hearing this music.

Party Room – The room is dark and cozy with a roaring fire burning in a large fireplace. I can see a row of people come dancing forward to meet another row of people and the sound of the rhythmic stepping to the music is almost hypnotic. People are laughing and smiling as they twirl about to the sound of the lively music that the musicians are playing. There is plenty of drink and food for everyone. The floors are wood and seem to bounce as the people dance. It must be a pretty sturdy floor to have so many dancing. I would guess about 20 people can easily dance in this room. Everyone is dressed in their best or at least fairly nice clothing. It’s a time for guys and gals to flirt with one another. The girls have ribbons in their hair and have fashioned their hair in a manner that is most pleasing and not for work or everyday purposes.

The band of musicians are really belting a boisterous tune that has everyone clapping and moving about. I can see a blonde gal skipping in between other dancers going from right hand to left hand. She is quite lovely and she really has my attention. Still can’t tell if this is 1700’s or 1800’s. I would categorize this as a “middle” middle class party or an upper middle class party in that the people who are hosting it are not pretentious, which often happened to the upper middle class. These people are comfortable with who they are and have planned out a very fun evening for their guests.

At another point in the evening I am standing with this lovely blonde gal next to the fireplace. I think she may have invited me to attend the party. She seems pleased that I came. I am trying to see what kind of clothing I am wearing and what kind of dress she is wearing to get a better idea of the time period. I don’t get the impression that I am wearing any kind of uniform. The shirt cuff seems to have some kind of ruffle extending out from under the dark colored cloth of my dress coat. I could be Carl Ludwig or even Johannes von Trautenburg-Schuellenbach. I can’t recall if we had ruffles on our shirts during the time as Siegfried. The coat I am wearing is dark chocolate brown with nice brass buttons on the front. The coat is well fitted. The blond gal’s dress and hair style make me think this moment is from Johannes’s or Siegfried’s lifetime. She is wearing something like the straight style dress that became fashionable after the French Revolution, but Siegfried’s sisters wore the big dresses that were worn in the Imperial courts, which is after the straight French dresses. Perhaps her dress is not as full as my sister’s dresses. She does have some kind of decorative lacing just under the bust of the dress, which is not like the straight dresses. Perhaps this is something transitional. Of course during the time, all I care about is that she looks pretty.

I wonder if this lovely young woman has any idea who I am or what family I come from. I seem to be very amused by the playful friendly atmosphere of the party and the people. I am enjoying myself very much. I’m probably not supposed to be there. Still not sure who I am, but I am having a good time. I think I must be Siegfried and not Johannes. Perhaps there are two memories that have a similar theme and I am recalling them together. It’s happened before. Takes a while to sort that kind of mess out.

She even coaxes me out onto the dance floor and we are having fun. I think she is surprised that I dance so well and others join us on the dance floor and do the same kind of two person dance. I have a feeling that she may think me a bit stuffy or haughty and would not be able to dance with her. Regardless, I had a wonderful time and think upon this memory every year during the winter holiday season.

Snow covered area and traveling – The ground is covered with a thick layer of snow about a foot or so deep. It appears to be early morning and the air is really cold and the sky is clear and icy blue. I can see the steam from my breath as well as the horse’s. Not sure which life time this is yet. There is a small hillside covered with tall pine or fir trees and a small open field before it on the left side of the trail that I am riding down. I can really hear the snorting sounds of the horse. I don’t think he likes the cold or the fact that we are going through snow. There is a curve in the trail or road ahead and a small building like a barn or something like that is near the roadside. On my right side I see more trees but they are near to the trail and perhaps a hillside as well there too. Not sure. Kinda have a feeling I have a memory of this location in the Fall when there is no snow. Perhaps I lived nearby.

When the sun hits the snow, it sparkles and becomes almost blindingly white. I have to be careful not to gaze too much at it as it will give me a headache. There is a feeling that this has happened before to me. This area is more wide open and I see more cottages and barns throughout this open area where the sun is more easily visible upon the land. I see small plumes of smoke slowly rising in the air from the chimneys of the buildings that look so closed up as if they are shivering from the cold morning. I know I am cold and can feel it in my hands. I am wearing black leather gloves. The horse is dark brown with a black mane. It appears that I am wearing black riding boots and grey riding trousers. This could be a Manfred memory. I get the feeling that I am wearing the round officer’s cap. Where the heck am I going on a horse in the snow? And what part of my life time is this?

And this is where the recall ends.

Put some music on, enjoy the companions you have, and share life’s ups and downs. Make some memories for the future to be recalled next life time or this one.